Gaza Above the Siege: The Blockade 15 Years Later

Since 1948, the Gaza Strip has grappled with numerous episodes of isolation, closure, and blockade as part of Israel’s policy of collective punishment. In 2007, the harshest chapter of Israel’s violence against Palestinians in Gaza began as Israel imposed a land and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip. After 15 years, the blockade rendered the Gaza Strip “unlivable,” and in addition to Israeli military assaults, Palestinians in Gaza suffer from abject unemployment and poverty, a debilitated health-care sector, and extreme environmental hardship. In the face of these challenges, Palestinians in Gaza have embarked on efforts to challenge the blockade.



Join us, on Wednesday June 29, at 12 pm EDT for a conversation with Hadeel Assali and Toufic Haddad to talk about the blockade on Gaza 15 years later. Our panelists will help us understand how the blockade as a policy has shifted over the time,, what allows it to persist, and who the players are that contribute to its continuation.

Register at bit.ly/GazaAboveSiege

Toufic Haddad (PhD.) is a Palestinian academic and author of Palestine Ltd.: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territories. He completed his PhD in Development Studies at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London in 2015 and has worked in various capacities across Palestine as a journalist, researcher, consultant, editor, and publisher. He currently lives in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem where he directs a British research institute.

Hadeel Assali is an anthropologist and former engineer whose work focuses on the colonial legacies of geology and on Palestinian anti-colonial relations with the earth. Her current research as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University focuses on ways to decolonize the earth sciences. She is also a filmmaker and writer whose work has drawn heavily from her family stories based in Gaza, Palestine.